journal article
LitStream Collection
Home
doi: 10.1068/b32111pmid: N/A
This paper focuses on problems and their causes and cures in policy and planning for large-infrastructure projects. First, it identifies as the main problem in major infrastructure developments pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of misinformation is cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, it explores the causes of misinformation and finds that political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not those of their competition, that gain approval and funding. This results in the ‘survival of the unfittest’, in which often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, it presents measures for reforming policy and planning for large-infrastructure projects with a focus on better planning methods and changed governance structures, the latter being more important.
doi: 10.1068/b32112pmid: N/A
In this paper I review the problems surrounding the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in the appraisal of large-scale infrastructure projects. I define the requirements of a best-practice transport CBA and show the difficulties in achieving these for large-scale projects. The main difficulties discussed are those of forecasting over long time periods, dealing with imperfect competition in transport-using sectors to obtain estimations of wider transport benefits, introducing private finance and appraising network effects. I conclude that CBA can remain a valuable tool as part of the appraisal process but that the inputs to a CBA have to be carefully assessed, and complementary approaches, such as computable general equilibrium modelling, have a useful role to play for very large or network projects.
doi: 10.1068/b32110pmid: N/A
Decision making with respect to large infrastructure projects is at least partly based on ex ante evaluations of costs and impacts. Impacts include economic, environmental, and social impacts, sometimes aggregated in a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). For such ex ante evaluations the quality of the related demand and costs forecasts is very important. This paper aims to answer four questions: (1) What is the quality of demand forecasts for large infrastructure projects? (2) What is the quality of cost forecasts for these projects? (3) How can current practices with respect to assessing the demand and cost forecasts be improved? (4) Which implications do the insights have for practice, and which challenges for future research can be derived from the findings? A literature review is used to answer the first three questions. It is concluded that the quality of transport demand and costs forecasts is often very poor, especially for rail projects. This is not so much a lack of adequate forecasting techniques or a matter of insight into the factors determining costs, but more the strategic behaviour of some actors. Improvements therefore should not only be looked for in the area of transport demand and cost-estimation methodologies, but should also focus on the question of how strategic behaviour can be avoided or at least limited. These conclusions are very important for CBA because cost underestimations and demand overestimations have a major impact on the cost-benefit ratio and decrease the potentially positive impact of CBA on the quality of decision making. The paper discusses several challenges for related future research.
doi: 10.1068/b32109pmid: N/A
The Dutch Parliamentary Commission on Infrastructural Projects has conducted a parliamentary inquiry into the decisionmaking process and implementation control in two major infrastructural projects: the Betuwe Freight Line between Rotterdam and Germany, and the HSL - Zuid— the high-speed rail link which will connect Amsterdam with Belgium and France. The commission proposes a new assessment framework which gives parliament better control of the decisionmaking process for future large projects. In this contribution I discuss the development and design of large infrastructure projects, including the way the territorial impact of these projects is mitigated. I observe that problems are often approached from extremely narrow terms of reference, from one favourite solution, whereby countless potentially worthwhile alternative solutions are dismissed out of hand or enter the picture too late. In addition, problems concerning the mitigation of territorial impacts of infrastructure are misjudged in the beginning, and lead to cost overruns at a later stage. There is too much focus on the infrastructure track and not enough focus on area development. Also, the operation of the infrastructure project is misjudged and attention is too narrowly focused on the investment aspects of the project. I formulate some lessons for the future, not only for the Netherlands, but also for other modern countries. The timely generation and acknowledgement of infrastructure alternatives enhances the democratic process and quality of public decisionmaking.
doi: 10.1068/b32085pmid: N/A
Whilst it is generally accepted that architecturally or historically significant buildings should be protected in the common interest, conservation policy often raises a series of dilemmas for governments in terms of balancing demands for preservation and change. In 1987 statutory protection for historic buildings in England was extended to the post-Second World War (ie post-1945) era, taking conservation planning into new and sometimes controversial territory. This paper examines the origins and evolution of England's postwar listing programme, exploring the factors that prompted the state to extend protection into such a politically contentious area of conservation policy. Attention is drawn to the lobbying role of influential postwar conservation lobbyists located within and outside state structures in making the case for 1950s and 1960s architecture. However, the politics and practices of postwar listing are ultimately shown to be rooted in the underlying logic of built heritage regulation in England. The paper offers original insights into the state's role as conservation champion and its implications for what gets protected and why from the physical legacy of 1950s and 1960s design.
doi: 10.1068/b32152pmid: N/A
Rapidly declining groundwater levels since the early 1990s have raised serious concern in Monroe County, Michigan. Hydrological studies suggest that land-use changes have caused this decline. The mechanisms linking land-use and groundwater dynamics are not clear, however. In this paper I present WULUM, the Water-Use and Land-Use Model, an agent-based model that serves as an analytical framework to understand how these processes interact to create the observed patterns of resource depletion, and to suggest policies to reverse the process. The land-use component includes the main groundwater extractors in the county—stone quarries, golf courses, farms, and households. The groundwater component includes the glacial deposits and the underlying bedrock acquifer. The behavior of water users is defined by simple rules that determine their location and consumption. The dynamics of groundwater are represented through infiltration and diffusion rules between each cell and its immediate neighbors. Initial explorations with the model showed that land-use patterns contributed significantly to groundwater declines, while eliminating quarry dewatering did not entirely solve the problem. Both low-density and high-density zoning restrictions improved aquifer conditions over medium-density development, suggesting a nonlinear relationship between intensity of residential use and groundwater levels. Moreover, of all the natural and policy variables, zoning had the greatest influence on urban settlement and therefore on resource consumption.
doi: 10.1068/b32150pmid: N/A
All current urban models accept the ‘first-order recursion’ view, namely, that the state of an urban system at time t is sufficient for predicting its state at t + 1. This assumption is not at all evident in the case of urban development, where the behavior of developers and planners is defined by the complex interaction between long-term and short-term plan guidelines, local spatial and temporal conditions, and individual entrepreneurial activity and cognition. In this paper we validate the first-order recursion approach in an artificial game environment: thirty geography students were asked to construct a ‘city’ on the floor of a large room, with each student using the same set of fifty-two building mock-ups. Based on the analysis of game outcomes, the first-order recursive set of behavioral rules shared by all the participants is estimated and further employed for computer generation of artificial cities. Comparison between the human-built and model patterns reveals that the constructed set of rules is sufficient for representing the dynamics of the majority of experimental patterns; however, the behavior of some participants differs and we analyze these differences. We consider this experiment as a preliminary yet important step towards the adequate modeling of decision-making behavior among real developers and planners.
Stevens, Daniel; Dragićević, Suzana
doi: 10.1068/b32098pmid: N/A
This study proposes an alternative cellular automata (CA) model, which relaxes the traditional CA regular square grid and synchronous growth, and is designed for representations of land-use change in rural-urban fringe settings. The model uses high-resolution spatial data in the form of irregularly sized and shaped land parcels, and incorporates synchronous and asynchronous development in order to model more realistically land-use change at the land parcel scale. The model allows urban planners and other stakeholders to evaluate how different subdivision designs will influence development under varying population growth rates and buyer preferences. A model prototype has been developed in a common desktop GIS and applied to a rapidly developing area of a midsized Canadian city.
Showing 1 to 10 of 13 Articles